A Bell Across the Water
by M.F.D
Summary: The pyreflies swirl around them in droves, the Moonflow a shining road of white against the night sky, and suddenly he doesn't feel so out of place. Tidus/Rikku. 100% pure and unadulterated fluff.


Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X belongs to THE BOX of Enix.

Notes: Certainly not as popular as Tidus/Yuna (LOL Tuna) or Aurikku, but I'm setting something up here. Also, overwhelming urge for teenager fluff.

This author in no way endorses underage sexual conduct in real life, blah blah minors blah jailtime blah Michael Jackson, don't fuck kids.

...

When Rikku first kisses him he is both ecstatic and terrified. Of course he loves Yuna, he loves her just as much as he loves all his friends, and as a guardian he thinks it's a good thing, because it forces him to try that much harder to protect them.

But he is only seventeen, with all the troubles that accompany such a tumultuous age, and he is so alone, here in Spira, where no one (at long last) knows him solely by his father.

By the low and steady light of the Moonflow she approaches him, her lips smiling and her eyes wide, and he spends a few precious moments simply looking at her, at her face, at the vivid green of her irises, wondering how her pupils work as compared to his. He is not startled when she finally speaks, but he feels a jolt go through his body as if he were. The pyreflies wheel crazily above their heads.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" Her head tilts towards the river, and her goggles catch and gleam.

"Yeah," he says. "Makes you wonder…why all the pyreflies come here."

"Maybe they're here for the city." She points without actually lifting her hand, but Tidus knows where to look even so. He doesn't know what to say to something like that, so for a while he's quiet, and the world around them is motionless save for the flickering of the campfire just beyond the road's bend.

Rikku is the one to finally break the silence, taking a wide step so that she can tuck herself against his side. Confused, he moves his arm to make way for her, hand flitting nervously over the curve of her hip, the softness of her stomach. He has never held a girl like this before. She looks up at him in the moonlight, in the pyrelight, her pupils the swirl of oil in a deep green sea.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" She asks, and his tongue stumbles. He has never worried about this before because there has never been anyone for him and him alone; somehow it always came back to Jecht, not the little boy standing in his shadow.

Rikku saves him from having to decide by simply deciding herself, leaning up on the tips of her toes and kissing him. It seems as though their lips hug each other in all the places where lips are supposed to touch, so seamless and complete that for an instant he thinks that they have been quietly and skillfully welded together. At some point they pull apart, bare centimeters separating them, her breath fanning across his face and _god_, she smells like the stadium in high summer, all heat and sunshine, and the eventual promise of clear, cool water.

Tidus wants to protest, just a bit. She's so young, even considering his own age, and he doesn't want to hurt her because he knows, he _knows_ he's clumsy with things, with _feelings_, like this, and that it might scar her in some way if he messes up. And years of drunken, fatherly "pep talks" assure him that he will mess this up. But then Rikku saves him again, totally unknowingly (or maybe not, because maybe women can read certain things better than men), by saying, "I'm not some kind of innocent, you know."

She leans up, this time to bump their noses together. There is a tiny furrow between her brows, caused by amusement, or perhaps deep thought, but either is fine, really, because he knows it isn't anger. He wants to kiss it, so he does. Rikku laughs, tinkling and merry, and he thinks that someone, somewhere on the southern bank can hear the ringing of bells across the water.

"That's what I want to hear," she tells him, with what looks like no small amount of fondness, but before he can ask what she's talking about, he didn't even _say_ anything, she is kissing him again.

_She kisses with her eyes open_, he thinks. _We can still see each other. That's why it feels so right._

The brilliant glow of the pyreflies surrounds them, the Moonflow a rainbow, a river of precious stones, and all the emeralds in the world dull in comparison to the ones caught in Rikku's eyes.

...

A/N: TUNA. lulz.


End file.
